The title says it all. Castile now gets a PU claim on Portugal after the Iberian Wedding, and it's seriously broken. I am just venting over how much more of a pain it is to play as Portugal and Morocco now.
Portugal is obvious, though my griping is less about how much harder it is for the player than how it affects the AI. If you play Portugal, you can still pretty easily avoid getting eaten by Castile by allying with France. For the AI, however, it's all but impossible for Portugal to stay independent past 1500. Not only does it make Castile even more OP, but as someone who likes to use EU4 to roleplay historical fiction, seeing Portugal get destroyed so early (and before they've started exploring and colonizing) kind of kills the immersion for me.
As Morocco, the new Portugal PU makes resisting Castile's conquest that much harder, especially since with Portugal's navy helping Castile it's harder to prevent troops from crossing the Strait of Gibraltar. This has ruined a few of my Morocco games early on, and I already felt that Morocco is a bit too easy for Castile to conquer compared to how resilient it was in real life.
TL;DR Castile's new Portugal PU sucks. Thank you for attending my soap box.
I am playing a France game right now and I guess by Paradox standards I am "new" (200+ hours lol). France is super easy. You can win the hundred years war super easily just by allying Castile and Burgundy (and that's overkill honestly), most of your missions involve beating up smaller nations (admittedly some of these nations drag you into wars with Austria but for the Italian provinces you can just wait until the Shadow Kingdom event ends and they aren't in the HRE anymore). You can get a good navy going really quickly, enough to beat out the English super early (though admittedly a new player might not realize how little the overextension cost on your fleet is and won't go over it). You get a nice vassal swarm right at the start of the game and almost everything around you starts as cores. France is super easy AND fun to play.
Edit: I don't usually play PU games either, so could it be a PU mechanic that i am also unaware of?
I haven't played since 1.28 or 1.29, but I'm looking to get back in with a Castile game. Previously, I used to use the following as keys to a super-powered Castile strategy
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Take explo first, but don't fill it out all the way. The first two ideas in the group are great, the rest is largely fluff. Castile/Spain also gets event/mission explorers/conquistadors, as well as a colonist and claim fabrication ability without Exploration, and you can take a PU over Portugal early and easily, and also have the possibility of getting one over England/Great Britain. I always thought the optimal thing was to start explo, then swap the idea group later to something more generally useful (diplo/influence likely), and let my subjects do the bulk of the colonizing while I do enough to complete my missions and augment their efforts
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Take Religious second. Eat up African trade company regions while waiting to take this idea group (to avoid religious unity issues), then use it to tear through and convert North Africa, working my way towards the Middle East.
Reading over the patch notes, I feel that the meta has definitely changed though. The re-works to colonial nations make colonization seem much more profitable, as it can now give many more boosts and is customizable, as opposed to only giving limited tariff income and steering trade your way. Simultaneously, the ability to just stuff all of Africa and the Middle East into Trade Companies makes conversion largely unnecessary and limits the appeal of religious ideas (still love Deus Vult though!).
So do you think Explo+Expansion for your first idea groups is the best Castile strategy post Emperor for aggressive players? That's certainly a more appealing combo than before, but I still feel like the opportunity cost of not taking some combo of Deus Vult/Admin/Diplo/Influence is pretty high for those who love to paint the map in the Old World. Let me know what you think, fellow Castile enthusiasts!
Just got the game and I was playing Castile vassalized Navarra and went to war with Granada in 1448 but my navy got decimated by the morrocians so Iβm just stuck in this long ass war.
https://preview.redd.it/1kjnvqcavg571.png?width=1919&format=png&auto=webp&s=f3fd71f4f4f08c132b1676042ac911688cedf295
